s A Bishop Saint - Hull Museums Collections

A Bishop Saint

This small panel belongs to a much larger complex of which only a small part has been identified. It was never meant to be appreciated in its own right but ‘read’ as part of a sequence of small panels which were positioned under a large altarpiece. As the figure of the still unidentified bishop is facing towards the left the convention would be that he would be placed on the right looking inwards towards the central panel of The Nativity. The painting is in egg tempera, the most common technique in 15th century Italy, consisting of a gesso ground of prepared plaster on a wooden panel onto which the paint, made from powder colour bound with egg-yolk, was applied.